Oso Ristorante

The girlfriends scheduled a belatd birthday dinner for me some time back. We planned to eat Italian (I'm forever trying out new Italian places with that bunch of girlfriends...ha!) and one of them booked a table of four for Oso Ristorante.

Pardon for the really bad photos below...the lighting in the restaurant was dim, and I still haven't figure out how to properly shoot food photos in a night setting indoors. You would notice that the colour lighting for all the photos below look really different. Sigh.

Various breads (and breadsticks) for starters

I wasn't terribly impressed with the mains there. We ordered four dishes (from top left clockwise above)
- thinly sliced beef carpaccio with thin slices of truffles in a bed of alfafa sprouts, whole wheat “stracci” with braised wild boar in red wine, the risotto with fresh tomato, marjoram and thinly sliced raw “cappesante” scallops and the “Ravioli” filled with veal in mixed cheese fondue and mushrooms sauce.

All were at the most, average. I rather liked the beff carpaccio, and the risotto with the scallops. I was okay with the wild boar pasta and I didn't like the ravioli at all.



The desserts on the other hand, were all superb. We ordered three and all three were really good. Which sort of made up for the lacklustre dinner fare. My favourite would have to be the 70% hot dark chocolate tart “crostata” with milk ice cream. The tart shell was thin and crispy, it broke apart easily with a fork cutting through it, the chocolate filling was really dreamy, and the whole textural and taste flavours of the dessert was awesome.

The other two desserts, the white chocolate and orange “d’arancio” cake with a Grand Marnier liquor sauce was also tasty. I'm not a big fan of orange desserts. I prefer my oranges eaten on their own or freshly juiced and am just starting to enjoy orange flavoured desserts. The cake was super moist and orangy, with bits of orange zest and the mandarin segments on the plate added to the total citrus factor. The final dessert was a crispy pastry (filo?) basket filled with lemon cream and fresh raspberries. The lemon cream was puckering tart, not extremely so, but just to the right extent while the raspberries added a pretty nice sweetness to the overall dessert.

I would go back again, not for the mains but for the superbly well executed desserts....